Normal people can't get away with things like this, because the decisions would haunt our dreams.
Two great books to start with:
- The Science of Evil: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Evil-Empathy-Origins-Cruelty/...
- The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscious: https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Without-...
Regular people make, logically, truly horrifying decisions constantly.
I bought some wine for a friends get-together. That's pretty normal.
But in doing so, I chose to have wine rather than vaccinate some children.
I chose having a drink over the lives of deprived children. Am I not a monster?
The average person's dinner involved a tremendous amount of sheer pain and suffering, but it's satisfying to their taste buds, so they are fine with it, and will find ways to rationalize it.
Most everyone is a psychopath at some level, capable of discarding empathy or rationalizing evil when it serves their own interests. The only difference with the CEOs is that they're doing it for money, not for taste. It's quite easy to imagine someone moving the goalposts for what is worth causing suffering for.